Do You Remember? – Sonic Heroes

“Do You Remember” is a segment of where we remind you guys of classic games you may have forgotten, and games we wish could either have a remake, be brought back to life with a HD upgrade, or be given a sequel, or quite possibly something else. At the end of the article, I will tell you guys what I believe should be done with the game.I’m going to be honest here: I didn’t enjoy Sonic Adventure. I felt like it was too cheesy and just didn’t have a good enough story to keep me playing. Sonic Adventure was one of the many 3D Sonic the Hedgehog games, and for some strange reason, 3D Sonic games just don’t have the same appeal as the main 2D games do. That is until Sonic Generations came along. But if there was one other 3D Sonic game that was truly decent, then it had to be Sonic Heroes.
When booting up the game, you could choose between four teams, each with their own little story following the same campaign locations:

Team Sonic – Sonic, Tails and Knuckles

Team Dark – Shadow, Rogue and E-123 Omega

Team Rose – Amy, Cream and Big

Team Chaotix – Espio, Charmy and Vector

After hearing that Dr. Eggman has a plan to take over the world in just 3 days, Sonic being Sonic, he and his team heads out to stop him. Sounds so simple doesn’t it? However, the other three teams, Dark, Rose and Chaotix, also want to try and stop him for their own personal reasons; Team Dark are out for revenge on Dr. Eggman, Team Rose are actually after Sonic because of what they uncover (which is also believed to be connected to Eggman) and Team Chaotix are hired to find Dr. Eggman. The entire campaign turns into one big race essentially; a truly fun one at that. Sure, the story seems quite corny, but then every Sonic game seems that way.
Since the game is a “team based” game, you progress through the levels “as a team”, and the way you do so is pretty cool. In order to fill up the pathway, your team will consist of the leader in the middle (you) and the other two on the sides. That way you’re able to pick up the rings lined up in a row as well as defeat enemies easier. Some obstacles also require team work, for example in the instance of Team Sonic, there may be long distance areas which may only be reachable by having Tails fly over there with Sonic and Knuckles holding onto him, or there may be a big block in the way and you’ll need Knuckles to break it down. It’s the same sort of style with each of the teams. Each team also had their own special ability too, which could be used on multiple enemies after the team bar had been filled up… I used this all the time when possible.

The levels were either the classic or some brand new ones. Classic levels were such as the “Casino” levels which you have have seen appears plenty of times in previous Sonic games. An interesting mechanic about the game is that each team had their own set of scores to earn to get a certain rank. For example, in the level “Frog Forest”, to get Rank A, the scores required for each team were as follows:

Team Sonic: 35,000

Team Dark: 45,000

Team Rose: 40,000

Team Chaotix: 40,000

This added fresh replay value to whatever team you chose to play as, and made multiple playthroughs great fun. The game also had it’s regular features like picking up ring, getting high scores and progressing through bonus levels. Each team also had their own set of bonus missions to fulfill; Team Chaotix tended to be more cautious about killing and had missions involving sabotage, whilst Team Rose tended to have missions involving picking up rings. The strange reality of this game was this: Sonic Adventure got better reviews, yet in my eyes, Sonic Heroes was clearly a better game. Sonic Heroes also had a charming upbeat soundtrack, which for a bright and colourful game was to be expected.
Also included in the game was a multiplayer component, where two players could choose a team and would compete to win. The multiplayer had their own separate levels, but the downside of the multiplayer was that you had to unlock the modes via the single player. Modes included trying to earn the most balloons in a special stage style level and even trying to knock your opponents off the level (more fun that it sounds).
Sonic Heroes should have got a sequel, and yet somehow Sega felt the need to not develop one. Whether there’s a chance we’ll get one is unknown, but next year will be the 10th anniversary of this game in Japan, so who knows what the future may hold. I also feel like this game deserves a proper HD re-release, probably an XBLA/PSN re-release with trophies/achievements. The game was released on the Gamecube, Playstation 2, Xbox and Microsoft Windows in 2003-2004. The game has since been released on the Playstation Network as a PS2 classic title.
Next week is the final “Do You Remember?” for this year, and takes a look back at the lesser known game, Scrapland.